star wars 9 grim resignation thread

u monster

my friend who does Star Wars cosplay (mostly as Kylo Ren) went to Disney as Rose (wearing a similar pendant) and got harassed by a busboy who proceeded to accost her and tell her how terrible a character she was for about 15 minutes while she was trying to get food.

I kinda hate this fanbase.

(natch they reported him)

should have told him he was doing a horrible job playing a Disney employee and they can people for that

i find it pretty weird that the twitter/tumblr/online press zeitgeist opinion seems to be that The Last Jedi WAS A TOTAL ERROR OMG DISASTER HOLY SHIT THEY WRECKED STAR WARS

whereas my experience seeing it and chatting to normal real life people afterwards was that despite a few shitty bits, everyone had a lovely time and it went down really damn well.

people on the internet convinced of the importance of their own opinions can't allow themselves to not tear every single thing apart i guess?

^
(old man shouting at "the cloud")

this whole revival is an exercise in pandering and condescension (I say this as someone who mostly likes the new movies) and people, as a rule, unconsciously despise being pandered to.

Last Jedi was pretty great imo. I think it's the least pander-y of the bunch.

really excited for this

oh wait sorry thought this was the RIP Donald Trump thread

the films are very skillfully made with some awe-inspiring moments...i think they fall short in certain areas, mostly in their stabs at terrible meta humor that are mostly completely out of character for those who deliver the lines.

Agreed, I don't think they benefit from any kind of self-awareness

Shdn't grim resignation be the title of uk politics thread lol

Actually, I haven't seen any of the new ones yet. Should I?

The Last Jedi was the first new one I've seen since Caravan Of Courage was in the cinema, and I enjoyed it OK

the last jedi > attack of the clones > revenge of the sith > rogue one > the phantom menace > the force awakens

Attack of the Clones should always bring up the rear

McGregor brings up the rear of that alien-cook's trousers in the diner scene

the last jedi > attack of the clones > revenge of the sith > rogue one > the phantom menace > the force awakens

― difficult listening hour, Tuesday, July 10, 2018 9:43 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh wow i am so into this ranking

nobody thought of getting the gang of human actors back together

wha? that’s fucking nuts

rewatched all the prequels this last few weeks as the girlfriend hadn't seen them. They're all actually worse than I remember. stories and scripts are mindboggling awful from start to finish and anyone thinking the new films are somehow worse than them is crazy.

Clones at least is somewhat entertaining during the assassination sequence and then, yeah.

Phantom Menace was godawful, I watched that one for the first time since 1999.

I still kinda like RotS, warts and all.

the part where Anakin gets the "it's only a fleshwound!" treatment is v funny

guys let's just do a "the prequels are: good or bad" poll and everyone who votes for the losing option gets permabanned

polls are anonymous to protect those of us who keep voting for a certain indiana jones/crystal skull movie as the best spielberg work

The Last Jedi > The Force Awakens >> Rogue One >> root canal >>>>> the prequels

seriously tho, the three old leads aren't in *any* scenes together?

not a one in TFA

well, I guess Han Solo/Chewbacca counts, although in the last couple released films, Mayhem is no longer in the costume

petition for a spin-off starring Dean Winters as Chewbacca with the wookiee head taken off

how the fuck did I type that instead of Mayhew

Peter Mayhew. sheesh. sic, you should have caught that

oh wait, the insurance commercial character is Mr. Mayhem and I was properly clowned

never mind

... did you take a piss all the way through the Han / Leia scene?

I was doing my hair

YOU GUYS.

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--EQl3mdZQ--/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/ybsmpyjtqyzixdtjhg12.jpg

http://tse2.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.a-aCdAU5cK_Jy9dSXOsaAgEsCo

https://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Billie-Lourd.png

this is where I admit that I took "the three old leads aren't in *any* scenes together?" to mean all three of them in the same scene and then appended han-chewie as an additional combo outside of the han-leia and luke-leia duos

but then decided it'd be funnier if I pretended the only two to ever appear together were han and chewie

chewie did not, in fact, do something different with his hair

ok fine i'll see the damn films

I'm the man out there pressuring individuals into believing star wars movies are genius works of art

― mh

"the last jedi" showed up on netflix. i don't have netflix but the place where i get my tms has netflix and i got tired of watching nature documentaries after five weeks (yes i understand now what polar bears look like and your narrator script is terrible) so i'm watching it again, this time in 2d. it really is a wonderfully put together movie, "genius work of art" i wouldn't say but it's fantastically subversive, kind of like moffat's doctor who except it's entertaining in addition to being clever. my drunk ass is wondering how much of the backlash is just a backlash against people being clever, which if you don't like cleverness fuck you you are sentenced to watching all of the "nick and nora" movies until you stop perceiving this as a "sentence".

seriously today i was watching the scene transition where they went from a zoom from water dripping on kylo ren's hand to a spaceship, if you'd rather see another fucking wipe fuck you you are sentenced to watching "radar men from the moon" until you _do_ perceive this as being a sentence

I was being sarcastic because they’re workmanlike family space dramas

steve yedlin pretty solid cinematographer though and when they ramp up all the practical+digital visual effects and great foley artists even scenes that drag seem like they could be real

also re: clever, I kind of hated them when I realized in the intro he is saying “holding for general HUGS” but now I kind of chuckle and mumble “general hugs”

idk, i've seen enough mediocre and bad films that i have a hard time describing any of the star wars films, even the awful ones, as "workmanlike"

and yeah, starting the movie with one of the main characters making a stupid prank phone call to a captain of a star destroyer is idiotic enough to be entertaining. there's a fine line, i've been told, between clever and stupid, and "the last jedi" for the most part straddles it expertly

buddy “workmanlike” in my book means they have a work ethic, actual normal level of skills (they’re probably union), and they’re able to hack it

I mean, if you go by strict definitions a lot of Ron Howard work is hack work — they give a director with the right skills a direction and a script and he churns out usable product. It doesn’t mean it’s bad in quality necessarily. imo JJ Abrams is very much in the hack camp — he takes the day’s norms and a given formula and comes out with something that reaches the standards of the time

I also think there are several directors/producers who are sub-hack getting work now because they’re disconnected from modern standards or think themselves auteurs and fall far short of interesting result

In repeat viewings the stupidest part about TLJ is how much time it spends on two doofuses who are always fucking up and surviving by miraculous intervention while almost all their comrades get murdered in bulk, and not making it funny enough.

I get the sense there was a difficult balancing act between treating Finn and Poe as the completely absurd, walking punchlines of masculinity that they are, and treating the near-total wipeout of the Resistance with some kind of A Bridge Too Far seriousness, and they got middled on the deal.

Like there’s a great dark comedy buried in TLJ - and i said basically right after Rian Johnson was announced that the guidepost to use was Brothers Bloom - but we’re supposed to care about all the rebel redshirts getting murked every other minute and that just makes it a little too much like those goddamn Hobbit sequels that aren’t any fun either.

I think TLJ owes a considerable debt plotwise, in terms of the rebel fleet actions and even the aesthetics and pursuit manner of the First Order, to the new Battlestar Galactica. I’m thinking of the (very excellent) second or third episode of the series (maybe it was called 33?), where they kept jumping and getting caught by the Cylon fleet because they were somehow tracking them.

yup

i don't think it gets terribly "middled", no - i think a lot of the criticism is about perceived tonal whiplash, which i don't see - having seen enough modern doctor who, and, frankly, living in 2018, i don't think there's any disconnect between slapstick comedy and apocalypse.

re-watching the movie, i don't think we as viewers are supposed to care about the rebel redshirts, but poe and finn _are_, and they're portrayed as incompetent for the simple reason that they don't. as for "miraculous intervention", one person's "miraculous intervention" is another's pure blind luck.

maybe i'm cynical about what human beings are capable of, but i find making an entertaining and watchable blockbuster movie takes an exceptional level of talent. to me, if you can shoot a three camera sitcom without sticking the boom mike in shot too often, that's my bar for competence.

the hobbit films? i could barely make it twenty minutes into them. absolutely leaden films, everything was telegraphed to excruciating extent. major characters from the books got lingering shots and ridiculous fanfares. none of the characters were at all likeable, they were all Important. they put fucking sylvester mccoy in the thing and he wasn't any more over the top than anyone else. the humor in tlj is certainly lowbrow humor, but it's brief enough that, to my chronically humor-averse sensibilities, it's actually funny instead of excruciating (see: lucas, george).

Kindly forgive any digressions/transgressions below, as I certainly won't remember them:

1) The autie fans also note that the novel Force powers and starship tactics (re: hyperspace) in TLJ invalidate much prior canon. Ie, huge swathes of the cinematic, animated, and literary canon hbecome senseless if force users can survive and fly about in vacuum, and starships can kamikaze through hyperspace.

2) We've never learned the appeal of the New Order, or for that matter its Imperial predecessor. In human history, most taxpayers are likely cattle, initially cowed by fear, but every enduring state has had an ideology providing legitimacy, and winning recruits. Whether its a claim to divine righ, fear of other nations, or of other classes. What exactly does the NO have? How can one align the economic efforts of billions, if it only seems to serve the whims of a petulant emo? Honestly, just as the best video game in the franchise (Tie Fighter (1994)) followed life in the Imperial navy (which was as beset by civil conflict as the Roman military), I think the best film in the franchise would look at what compels people to join the Empire/NO, what competing interests they serve there, how they let off steam, and how ordinary citizens view the rebels.

3) Since the debut, SW has existed primarily to sell action figure toys. Over 4 decades, I wouldn't be surprised if toy licencing outpaced box office nets. When I was young, my mum didn't buy SW figurines, like my friends had. I got the silver headed Micronauts, because mum was clueless. My friends had small-to-large scale SW dioramas in their bedrooms. I just had a handful of these peculiar yet more flexible ciphers, which my friends would pose in homoerotic tableaus.

4) So, fuck 'em all. Go crazy SW marketing and SW 9 writers. Let Chewie become the furry sex object he/she/it always threatened to become. Let Kylo realize he really wanted to express himself through paint instead of sabers all along. Let Rose Tico obtain justice from anonymous dark side hecklers, with extreme prejudice. I think SW licenced sex toys, and thumbscrews, would sell *great* among remaining die hards.